Significance Of Gender And Gender

The recognition of sex and gender is very different cross-culturally. Although the Western way of gender recognition is getting common around the world, many of non-western society still have other ways of gender recognition. Sometimes, the different recognition makes it difficult to understand gender relations in other cultures. This paper will analyse that how Western gender recognition has influence on understanding other societies’ gender relations by using case studies about Gerai and North American Indians.
Gerai is one of the Indonesian provinces of Kalimantan Barat. They have the concept of men and women, but it does not stem from the difference in their body, but their ability to perform certain kind of job in the rice field. Basically,…show more content…Because Western society. There are two factors which make it hard to understand other two non-Western cultures: the difference in how to determine gender and sex, and the status of each gender. First of all, how to define gender and sex is very different between Westerns society and the others. While Western society highlights their body, especially their genitalia, Gerai and North American Indian societies stress their role in their work rather than their body differences. According to Helliwell’s study which researched the relationship between recognition of gender and rape, for Western women, rape is one of the scariest incidents because they see a penis as “having the capacity to defile, to humiliate, to subjugate” them. In contrast, for Gerai women, “a penis is “only a penis”: neither a marker of dimorphism between men and women in general nor, in its essence, any different from a vagina [Helliwell, 2000].” The fear of Western women comes from the difference of their body, and the common sense that rape is a symbol of masculine. On the other hand, Gerai women recognise men’s body, in particular genitalia, as same as their body, so they are not afraid of being rape. They focus on sameness on their body. Second, the cultural status of each gender is also different. In Western society, it has been regarded that men is dominant and women is submissive,…show more content…There are two main Western models which make it difficult for Western people to understand non-Western culture: gender and sex difference is derived from the difference in their body, especially their genitalia, and the concept that men normally take higher status than women. These ideas are getting worldwide because of development of media and globalisation, so they seem to be universal ideas, however, there are still many cultures which do not accept these concepts like Geai and North American Indian culture. Therefore, it is important for Western people not to stick to their models and to expand their perspective to the world when they see the cross-cultural

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